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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724666">Phalaenopsis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv'>tiamatv</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alpha Castiel/Omega Dean Winchester, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, And Not Just Talk To The Plants, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Roommates, Engineer Dean Winchester, Florist Castiel (Supernatural), Fluff and Smut, Gardens &amp; Gardening, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:54:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Here, let me.” Cas’s long fingers plucked away a dead leaf from a calathea, and Dean watched helplessly as Cas rubbed the bare spot where the leaf had come away with a fingertip. “See? Isn’t it nice to let someone touch you now and again?”</p><p>“Goddammit, Cas ain’t the creep, <em>I’m</em> the creep,” Dean muttered, and put his head down on the desk.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>796</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Phalaenopsis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_qualitystudentharmony/gifts">a_qualitystudentharmony</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For a_qualitystudentharmony/mac, on Profound Bond!</p><p>Okay, you guys, you need to stop throwing these amazing prompts at the world. I actually need to do things like cook and clean. (Thank you to Banshee for catching some of my errors in post-production... really should learn to reread things before I chuck them onto the Internet.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean’s roommate was a weird, sweet, dorky guy, but one whiff of him and everyone knew that Castiel was an alpha. Holy fuck, but he smelled <em>good</em>—like no-one else that Dean had ever met before, like chocolate so dark it was a sensation on the tongue as much as it was a taste, an undertone of really good-quality rum. Cas smelled <em>decadent</em>, and the first time he’d stepped into the apartment Dean hadn’t just sniffed, he’d actually opened his mouth to let the scent of him drift over the sensory sniffers at the back of his throat, because <em>wow</em>.</p><p>That didn’t make him any <em>less</em> of a weird, sweet, dorky little guy.</p><p>“It is gonna be a problem that I’m an omega?” Dean asked, curiously, the first time they met—when Cas was showing him around the place, the small, unfurnished bedroom that had been cleaned and sanitized: even Dean’s sensitive nose couldn’t tell whether the last person who’d been living there had been alpha, beta, omega, male or female.</p><p>“No,” Castiel told him, calmly, looking up at him with an ocean in his eyes. <em>Shit, </em>he was pretty—which Dean realized was a weird thing to think about a male alpha, but he <em>was, </em>with those eyes and those lips and the perfect slant of his cheekbones<em>.</em> “I’m really not that kind of alpha.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.” Dean had his own thoughts about that. He didn’t snort, but it was a really close thing. Half the time when an alpha said that, they were trying to convince themselves about it, and the other half of the time they were trying to sucker some poor omega into the whole ‘nice guy’ routine. Even Sam, who was pretty much the most sensitive kid to ever pop a knot at puberty, didn’t pretend that he wasn’t really fucking <em>intense</em> sometimes.</p><p>Castiel chuckled at that. He <em>chuckled</em>, a low soft sound like the Impala’s wheels over gravel. Dean tried to pretend that the sound of that didn’t rub up and down the small of his back, but okay, so that voice went right along with that scent. “I would rather have you not believe me and find out for yourself that it’s true than the converse,” he said, with an amused gentleness that Dean would have to admit, later, ended up being a big part of the reason he took the room.</p><p>Who <em>talked</em> like that? Seriously, who talked like that?</p><p>Honestly, the lack of scent in the bedroom that Castiel was offering him should have been the first clue. That was the kind of consideration that most alphas didn’t bother with, just because their noses weren’t as good as most omegas’. Dean preferred living with alphas over either omegas and betas, it was just a better personality match for his own. In general it wasn’t too bad even when they were putting out scent all over the place. The pheromones involved in two omegas living together meant that Dean, even on his suppressants, ended up going into heat once or twice a year, and he just didn’t need that kind of crap.</p><p>But even <em>Benny</em> didn’t bother to clean up his stink—or at least he hadn’t before he and Andrea had gotten married; all bets were off now. And for all that the rest of the apartment smelled really good and definitely smelled like <em>Castiel</em>, the room was so empty of presentation scent it had to have been professionally cleaned.</p><p>He kind of got an idea why when Castiel showed him the third room.</p><p>It wasn’t big, maybe half the size of one of the bedrooms, but the room was full of sun—one whole wall was a glass sliding door onto a large balcony. Dean was pretty sure he’d never thought that the combination of chocolates and flowers could possibly be a <em>good</em> scent to him—that sounded so stereotypically omega that the part of him that had always been kind of annoyed by his presentation wanted to cringe—but <em>damn</em>. It smelled nice in here.</p><p>Dean stared at the collection of pots of various sizes scattered across the room—some filled with tall cascades of leaves, some flowering, some just barely starting to bloom. There was a little sink in the corner, a set of shelves with dozens of little jars and bags, a couple of watering pots. There were two small tables next to each other, and two desk chairs. One of the desks was bare—the other was covered with what looked like scattered pieces of paper, a couple of pencils, a piece of ribbon, another flowering something, and half a dozen tiny little cacti.</p><p>“I design plant and flower arrangements,” Cas told him, calmly. “For an online flower distributor. I use this as my home office space, and you’re welcome to share it if you like, I can move some of the pots. I find it very soothing, personally.”</p><p>Okay, so yeah, weird. And a little dorky. And <em>very </em>sweet.</p><p>Because Castiel—who was ‘<em>Cas’</em> by day three after Dean moving in—had not been lying one fucking bit about not being ‘that kind of alpha.’</p><p>When Cas made tea in the evenings, he always made two cups when Dean was home from work—the mint he added into it came off one of the balcony boxes, where he kept everything that needed changes in weather and anything that was edible. He always left one at Dean’s elbow if he found him outside of his bedroom—no matter how often Dean complained about drinking plant juice. (And if Cas had caught him lifting the cup to his nose and inhaling the really damned soothing smell of it more than once, considering that Cas <em>kept</em> bringing him the tea Dean was pretty sure the guy knew Dean actually liked it.)</p><p>Cas never forgot to run the exhaust in the bathroom when he was showering in there—to the point where Dean could barely get the hint of that dark chocolate and rum over the smell of shampoo and soap and mist. (Even when he tried to. Even when he sniffed <em>really</em> hard.)</p><p>Cas sternly told Dean that he needed to not study so hard for his electrical engineering professional licensing exam that he ended up facedown and drooling on ‘his’ desk in the plant room, one arm stretched out in front of him and the other curled possessively around NCEES review material binder. The gentle press of Cas’s fingers on the shoulder that had gotten stiff from the position that Dean had fallen asleep in had felt good—and <em>really damned respectful</em>. Cas didn’t try to make that hand come up anywhere near Dean’s collarbone, didn’t try to touch his neck, didn’t even bend any closer to <em>smell</em> Dean the way most alphas would have had to if they were pulling a move. He just pressed, his thumb nudging into that sensitive achy band of muscle between where shoulder blade stopped and backbone started.</p><p>His hands were just as <em>strong</em> as someone who used shears and clippers and cutters all the time should have been, if Dean had ever thought about it. Except he didn’t think of it. Until that moment.</p><p>And then he couldn’t stop thinking about it.</p><p>And Cas <em>talked. </em>To his <em>plants.</em> To the little ones in the plant room, in a low rumble that was mostly too soft for Dean to understand, just deep enough that it sounded like purring. He talked to the bigger ones on the balcony in a brighter voice, like he wasn’t afraid he was going to bother someone who heard those dark, raspy tones of his. He didn’t sing to them—Dean wasn’t sure his heart could have taken that if he did—but sometimes when he was puttering around plucking off a dead leaf here or taking a cutting there, he hummed. Once, Dean heard him <em>apologize</em> in a whisper to the amaryllis for trimming down its stem when the flowers were starting to fade.</p><p>Dean knew he shouldn’t be finding that really fucking adorable. He knew he shouldn’t. He <em>really</em> shouldn’t.</p><p>So Dean<em>definitely </em>shouldn’t have opened his mouth after about a month of craning his head and actually trying to hear what Cas was saying to his plants, and what came out of him was, “You, uh… you know you can talk to them in a normal voice, right?”</p><p>Cas turned from where he’d almost been serenading what Dean thought was an African violet—the little thing with the blue flowers that Cas kept in a little pool of water and called ‘finicky and a little temperamental.’ Cas blinked up at him from down on his knees, holding the pot cupped in both of his hands with his fingers dripping and wet. “You don’t mind?”</p><p>“Nah,” Dean told him, just a little too heartily. “You don’t got to whisper or anything.”</p><p>“Oh… thank you.” Cas looked <em>delighted</em>. “I think they will like that,” he told Dean, completely seriously.</p><p>(Yup. Still weird. Still dorky.)</p><p>So Cas, like a completely normal person, took Dean at his word, and within a few months Dean realized just what a bad decision that had been—and he had made a lot of really bad decisions in his life.</p><p>He could hear Cas, now—every day. Every evening. Every morning, on weekends.</p><p>Cas <em>encouraged</em> his plants. He told them the sun would make their leaves turn lovely colors, and that cold water must taste good. He told them that their flowers would make someone smile on Valentine’s Day, and that the harvest of their leaves would be wonderful in summer and cheer someone up all winter. (It turned out that he was talking to a basil plant, so Dean wasn’t gonna argue with him about that—even if putting it in the pitcher of summer lemonade did make it a funny color, it tasted <em>really</em> fucking good.)</p><p>“You’ll be alright,” Cas told something called a delta maidenhair—some kind of a ferny thing that Dean would have <em>guaranteed</em> was gonna end up in the compost bin from the looks of it when Cas brought it home. He looked up at Dean, watching him helplessly from behind his desk, and smiled at whatever expression was on Dean’s face. “It only needed a little careful light and a little love.”</p><p>“Like my freckles?” Dean heard himself joke, and wished he knew how to swallow his tongue.</p><p>But Cas just chuckled, softly, and ran a finger along one of the soft, fuzzy-looking triangles of leaves. “Just like your freckles,” he agreed.</p><p><em>Shit</em>.</p><p>Dean was pretty damned sure that “Do not develop a crush on your nerdy alpha roommate,” was one of those canon rules of mixed-presentation roommating. Hell, he was pretty sure it was one of those canon rules of roommating, fucking <em>period</em>.</p><p>Except Dean broke rules like they were made of cookies. Dean hadn’t been off his suppressants since he’d turned eighteen and gotten his first prescription. He was the only omega electrical engineer in his damned firm, and he was a <em>fucking good one</em>. He was so good clients and sites requested him <em>specifically, </em>even though everyone knew what his presentation was. He was a six-foot-one omega who’d never been mated and never wanted to be. He lived with alphas because he <em>liked </em>to.</p><p>Dean really wished, suddenly, that breaking rules wasn’t something that he did <em>all the time</em>.</p><p>Because yeah, Cas smelled so damned good, and that was nice, but that was just Dean’s sniffer. He could deal with that. Cas was the kind of sweetheart who did Dean’s laundry with his own whenever he was putting a load through and he knew Dean was busy with studying or work or both. He even used Dean’s own detergent for it, because Cas did not give a fuck whether he went into the 1-800-Flowers office with his clothes smelling bright and fresh, like Gain rather than something heavy alpha like Old Spice. But Dean could deal with the way that made his chest hurt a little, too.</p><p>He could <em>not</em> deal with the way Cas talked to his plants, sometimes.</p><p>“Oh,” Cas told what Dean thought was a little red bud of a tomato, his long fingers moving around and around it as he helped the vine twine its way up the central pole in a way that made Dean want to just <em>whine. </em>“You’re going to be so sweet and juicy when you’re ripe.”</p><p>(It honestly was. Dean was never going to admit to Sammy that Cas had gotten him to eat half a goddamned raw tomato in a way that had nothing to do with hamburgers: nothing on it but a little salt and pepper. He wouldn’t even admit to <em>Cas </em>how tasty it had been, in a way that had nothing at all to do with how the juice dripped down Cas’s wrists when he took his first bite. Or how Cas had laughed as he’d started licking it off his fingers, his tongue so damned <em>pink</em> that Dean had dropped his fork.)</p><p>“You’ve gotten to be so lush and beautiful,” Cas murmured to the little Meyer lemon tree on the balcony, kneeling in front of the fragrant little potted shrub with a watering can that was too absurdly small for his big hands. “You smell so good now, don’t you?”</p><p>(Dean was the one who made the lemon squares out of the first little harvest, but Cas was the one who told him that they were the best things he’d ever had, earnest as a heart attack.)</p><p> “Here, let me.” Cas’s long fingers plucked away a dead leaf from a calathea, and Dean watched with something that tasted a whole fucking lot like <em>lust</em> at the back of his throat as Cas rubbed the bare spot where the leaf had come away with a fingertip. “See? Isn’t it nice to let someone touch you now and again?”</p><p><em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>“Goddammit, Cas ain’t the creep, <em>I’m</em> the creep,” Dean muttered, and put his head down on the desk.</p><p>He had a handle on it, though. Mostly, he did.</p><p>Until Cas brought home that damned <em>orchid</em>.</p><p>Dean still didn’t claim he knew much of anything about plants. He knew more now than he had when he’d moved in some six months ago, sure—he knew the difference between a ficus and a fern, a bulb and a bromeliad, though sometimes he faked like he didn’t because it made Cas laugh. And if Cas knew more now about combinational and sequential circuits than he’d probably ever wanted to, well, he <em>had</em> offered to help Dean study for the damned Principles and Practice of Engineering licensing exam. So Dean would say that that was his own damned fault.</p><p>Dean was pretty sure, though, that for all he didn't know about plants, he could tell the difference between dead or alive.</p><p>He looked mistrustfully at the sad plant that Cas was holding between his hands—it had long, waxy leaves, but they were droopy and yellowish, not green. The area where the leaves had joined into the base of the plant was blackish and slimy. Dean wrinkled his nose against the sour smell of rot. “I dunno, Treebeard, not sure even you can revive that one.”</p><p>(Cas <em>loved</em> Lord of the Rings. Finding that out was about when Dean became pretty sure he was a goner.)</p><p>Cas looked sadly at it and touched the top with one careful finger. “It’s been so mistreated. <em>Ice cubes. </em>Can you imagine? I don’t know,” he said—Dean wasn’t sure if Cas was talking to him, or the plant, or both of them. But he straightened his back and raised his chin, blue eyes gone indigo with determination—suddenly looking so <em>alpha</em> that Dean blinked. “I have to try.”</p><p>‘Trying’ apparently involved some kind of <em>surgery</em> on the tragic-looking little thing, and Cas looked so wretched about it that, well, how could Dean <em>not</em> help? So they took the plant out of the pot—and the stench of rot was so bad that even Cas’s nose was wrinkling. Dean gagged, and Cas pulled open the balcony door to let out the smell. “Dean, I’m okay, I can—”</p><p>Dean swallowed. “No, I wanna help,” he told his roommate, and lifted the little bottle of dilute hydrogen peroxide to where Cas was holding up the roots.</p><p>But the orchid didn’t die overnight, and the next day, Cas carefully repotted it in something that smelled mulchy and healthy—sphagnum moss, bark chips, Cas told him. He offered Dean the shaker of cinnamon out of the kitchen spice rack with all the gravity of someone presenting him with a scalpel for surgery.</p><p>Dean blinked. “What? <em>No,</em> Cas, you’re not planning to eat it, no amount of cinnamon’s gonna help that!” he yelped.</p><p>Cas, tired-eyed, blinked twice at him—then laughed.</p><p>The sight of that grin—so big that it flashed gums over Cas’s white teeth, so big Cas’s eyes almost squinted shut with it—should really not have wrecked Dean the way it did. But of course it did, because Cas was <em>Cas,</em> smiles like that were rare, and the sound of his laughter even rarer. Just because Dean one hundred percent was in love with him didn’t mean that he couldn’t <em>enjoy</em> that.</p><p>But he enjoyed Cas putting the uncapped cinnamon shaker into his hand, wrapping his warm, rough fingers around Dean’s, and <em>both</em> of them solemnly tapping out some of it onto the musty, dark bottom (the ‘crown,’ Cas called it.) He enjoyed it more than he should.</p><p>Cas always took good care of his plants, there was no denying that, but he downright <em>babied</em> the sad little orchid. He hummed to it, running a finger down the remaining leaves like he was giving it a massage. He kept a little electric fan by it, slowly rotating, for circulation. He lifted the liner pot out of the ceramic every few days, checking on the roots. If Dean maybe took a peek himself when he was in the room by himself, well, he <em>had</em> helped clip them, it was sort of neat to see what the roots looked like, and once he pointed out a patch to Cas that had gone black since the last time Cas had checked it.</p><p>The smell of rot was gone in a week. A month later, the orchid was still alive, and it had put out a tiny little green shoot from where one of the old leaves had fallen off. It was hard to say which of them was more surprised by that.</p><p>“Is it gonna be okay?” Dean asked, peering over Cas’s shoulder as Cas carefully lifted out the liner pot, cradling it between both hands and tilting it this way and that to check for any more abnormal roots, bending over to look at it from the bottom. He wasn’t sure when he’d gotten really <em>invested</em> in the orchid, but considering that Sammy had <em>asked </em>after it when he’d called last night, Dean was pretty sure he was.</p><p>“I think so,” Cas crooned, in that dark, coarse voice of his, and even in profile Dean could tell he was smiling—the kind of slow, small smile that made Dean want to tug on Cas’s lower lip with his teeth. Cas’s thumb stroked up and down the orchid’s firm stem. “You just need to be fertilized, don’t you? You’re ready for it, now. Oh, you’ll feel so good.”</p><p>Yeah, Dean was an omega, but he wanted it said that the whole breeding thing was <em>not</em> a fucking kink of his. Not in any way. Not at <em>all</em>. Maybe someday he’d want pups, sure, but any alpha who wanted to tell him about how much they wanted to knock him up was going to get a fist to the face.</p><p>He’d gotten horny at home before. That was sort of inevitable. They both lived here, Cas was sex on the nose, and Dean would stand on the cross of Cas being too pretty for anyone’s own damned good until he fell off it.</p><p>But this time the thought of <em>Cas</em> at his back, thrusting in and <em>mounting</em> him, smacked Dean in the face like a sudden handful of scent powder. Just imagining that gentle, careful alpha so lost in him, so lost in <em>Dean</em> that that considerate filter just <em>shattered. </em>Thinking about Cas<em> biting</em> those words into the back of Dean’s shoulder—<em>you’re ready for it, oh, you’ll feel so good—</em>as he shoved his knot in and locked them together and just <em>spilled</em> all his come into Dean. That was just—</p><p>The whimper made it out through between Dean’s teeth before he could bite it down.</p><p>Considering he was practically leaning over Cas’s shoulder, there was no way Cas could have possibly missed hearing it.</p><p>Dean knew Cas wasn’t talking to him. He knew it. He knew there wasn’t anything even remotely sexual to it, even if the words could be seen as sort of… suggestive. Shit, Cas was talking to a <em>goddamned orchid.</em></p><p>But suppressants be damned, this time Dean <em>couldn’t </em>stop the rush of slick that made its way down the inside of his thigh, the smell of apple pie filled the room strong enough that it smelled like a goddamned <em>bakery, </em>and <em>holy fuck </em>that hadn’t happened to Dean since he was a teenager.</p><p>No matter how alpha-dull Cas’s nose was, there was no way he could miss <em>that, </em>either.</p><p>Cas almost fumbled the plant in his hands, he straightened up so fast, and that gave Dean just barely enough time to turn tail and fucking <em>flee</em>.</p><p>Where he thought he was going to run <em>to</em> he didn’t even know, he <em>lived here</em>, and how he was gonna explain to Cas that—that—</p><p>Yeah, no.</p><p>Dean wasn’t. He wasn’t gonna do that. Nope. There was gonna be <em>no </em>explanation. When Dean came out of his bedroom again—which possibly might be <em>never</em>—they were gonna pretend that nothing had happened here. Because that was what cross-presentation roommates did when the fucking omega between them got inappropriately horny from the awkward alpha talking to a half-dead orchid about <em>fertilizer</em>.</p><p>Dean had a pretty good handle on himself by the time he crept out of his room, too hungry to stay in for much longer. It was pretty late—Cas slept early, he took the Metra out to Downer’s Grove most mornings to make it into the office. There was a good chance he’d be in bed already, and—</p><p>Dean’s resolution that they just were gonna pretend nothing had happened lasted until he took a look at the defeated slope of Cas’s shoulders, the way only half of the lights in the kitchen were on, the way there were sandwich fixings spread out over the countertop in front of him. His hair was all poking up like he’d run his hands through it too many times, and there was a leaf stuck just behind his right ear.</p><p>There were two Tupperwares in front of him. One already had a sticky tape label with ‘Dean’ written across the top of it.</p><p>Cas jumped a little, and he turned. “Oh,” he said, softly. “I didn’t—I thought you were asleep already.”</p><p>“Cas, you didn’t…” and Dean trailed off, because why bother stating the obvious? Dean had gotten inappropriately horny, he’d run off, Cas <em>hadn’t</em> chased him—because Cas had been stating the perfect truth when he’d said that he really was <em>not</em> that kind of alpha—and now Castiel was making lunch for them both to bring to work tomorrow.</p><p><em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>Just peanut butter and jelly, because Cas wasn’t a good cook despite all the growing stuff, but <em>fuck</em>. Dean’s breath clicked in his throat as he tried to swallow. He was pretty sure he was supposed to say something else, something important, something like <em>thank you</em> or <em>you’re too damned good for this fucking world</em> or <em>you’re too damned good for me</em>.</p><p>“Dean?” Cas asked, warily. “I’m sorry, I…” he paused and folded his hands in front of him on the countertop. The look on his face was heartbreaking, heartbroken, and he looked so small that Dean, for a second, was shocked. “I’ve made you uncomfortable. I never meant to. I’m <em>sorry</em>.”</p><p>“No! No, Cas, I—no, that’s not…” except of course he had. But it hadn’t been Cas’s doing, not really.</p><p>Cas looked miserable, and like he didn’t believe Dean at <em>all</em>.</p><p>Shit. <em>Shit. </em>“I’m jealous of your plants, okay?” Dean blurted out.</p><p>It was the truth. It wasn’t the whole truth, not even close, but it was enough of the truth that it came out <em>sounding</em> honest.</p><p>Cas blinked. “What?”</p><p>“You <em>sex talk</em> them, Cas,” he sighed. “Like tonight.”</p><p>Cas’s eyes went wide, and his jaw actually <em>sagged. </em>How he could look both like the damned cutest thing Dean had ever seen and a surprised screech owl, all at the same time, Dean wasn’t even sure. “I do no such thing!”</p><p>Dean grunted. He hadn’t expected Cas to realize it, of course not. “You don’t mean to, but… you really do,” he insisted. “Sometimes. And with that voice of yours, and your scent, and your… your goddamned <em>everything, </em>I just… I know me getting all slick about it is pretty gross. <em>I’m</em> sorry.”</p><p>But Dean trailed off, because the look that Cas was giving him <em>wasn’t </em>familiar—it wasn’t that gentle amusement, or that serious squint when he couldn’t tell if Dean was joking, or even the eyeroll because just because Cas was weird didn’t mean he wasn’t a sassy little bastard at times. Dean didn’t know what it was. It was dark and hooded and intense, and for a second all Dean could think was <em>huh, </em>or maybe <em>hnnngh.</em></p><p>“I’m not the kind of alpha who would ever try to take advantage of an omega living with him, Dean,” Cas told him, his voice stiff.</p><p>Maybe this was supposed to be his angry face. Maybe he was <em>upset</em> by what Dean had implied. But Dean was so confused by the <em>go go go</em> signals his body was giving him at the sight of it that he actually <em>said</em> what he was thinking, this time.</p><p>“I know you’re not,” Dean told him. “But times like tonight? Dammit, I <em>really</em> wish you were.”</p><p>(In the end? It was the one time he didn’t regret his mouth running away with him.)</p><p>“Hey, does your roommate still talk weird to his plants?” Sam asked him, curiously, a couple of weeks later, taking a big bite of his salad. “I just realized. You haven’t mentioned it in awhile.”</p><p>Dean shrugged, and grinned. “Guess I stopped noticing.”</p><p>Cas was sweet and weird and dorky. He was respectful and he was gentle. He definitely still talked to his plants. His dark chocolate scent was still the best damned thing that Dean ever smelled, and whenever Dean came home and opened the front door he took an unashamed big breath of it, because even just a <em>whiff</em> of it made him slick these days.</p><p>And if that meant that sometimes he got thrown down on the living room carpet onto his hands and knees, well, okay. Having his sweet, weird, dorky alpha licking Dean’s slick off the inside of his thighs, moaning low like it was the best thing he’d ever had on his tongue, was no punishment.</p><p>Having Cas riding him from behind with Dean bent over the back of the sofa, up on his tiptoes and with his cock trapped against the cushions from how hard Cas was thrusting into him, was <em>definitely</em> no punishment. Cas might not have been the kind of alpha who took advantage of an omega living with him—and he wasn’t—but he was definitely the kind of alpha who got a kick out of having Dean hanging off his knot, <em>screaming </em>with how good it was.</p><p>(Dean wished he could have said he saw that coming, but he <em>couldn’t</em> have, so there.)</p><p>With the kind of things that Cas whispered into his ear—the kind of things he told Dean he wanted to do to him, the kind of things he wanted <em>Dean </em>to do to him? The sort of bone-rockingly filthy suggestions whispered into the back of Dean’s shoulder, groaned into the creases of Dean’s groin, pressed into the small of his back? The fact that once, just once, he pushed himself into Dean and then refused to move until he’d <em>talked</em> Dean into coming around him without a single thrust of his hips?</p><p>Yeah, Dean didn’t mistake what Cas said to his plants for sex talk anymore.</p><p>(And if Cas, in the quieter moments after, also told Dean he was beautiful, that he was wonderful, that he was so glad Dean had moved in, that he loved him—well, Dean didn’t mistake that for sex talk, either.)</p><p>~fin~</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Prompt: Ok but a/b/o roommate situation. Cas talks to his little plants to help them grow... and one day he’s like “I’m gonna fertilize you” or something and then dean just mutters under his breath like, “yes please”</p><p>A phalaenopsis is the most common kind of household orchid - the moth orchid. They're very pretty!</p><p>Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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